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AltaVista Goes Back to the Basics

Company refocuses its efforts on search technology, leaving its days as a portal behind.

By Clare Haney, IDG News   

"While many of these business decisions have been difficult, we are now in a position to unleash our search expertise with a clear, singular focus to penetrate every layer of the search market for both consumers and businesses," Rod Schrock, AltaVista chief executive officer and president, says in a statement.

AltaVista has plans to invest heavily in Net search technology. Such investments include ramping up its outlay on the vertical search arena, notably AltaVista's Shopping.com information service, according to the company statement. AltaVista also plans to invest in what it terms a third-generation search service, which will be capable of incorporating into a search query users' interests and the context of the query.

Additionally, the vendor has aggressive plans to grow its AltaVista Search Software Enterprise sales and support organization fourfold by the end of the present fiscal year and to form an Information Marketing Services branch offering in-context marketing services to content providers.

As well as the job cuts, AltaVista has finished an organizational restructuring exercise meaning that its California operations in Irvine and San Mateo are now consolidated in its Palo Alto headquarters, the company said in a statement. AltaVista has also condensed its four business divisions into a single entity. With these steps in place, the vendor hopes that AltaVista North America will turn a profit in the company's financial quarter due to end January 31, 2001.

AltaVista will also invest in expanding its international operations to more than 35 countries during the current fiscal year due to close July 31, 2000.

The company will launch the first of the 35 new language-specific Web sites next week with a search site for Denmark. This will be AltaVista's eighth country-specific Web site launched outside of the U.S. this year. Over 55 percent of AltaVista's 65 million monthly users come from outside of North America, according to the company's statement.

AltaVista is still licking its wounds after a failed attempt to launch flat-rate, unmetered Net access service in the United Kingdom. AltaVista's U.K. division announced the departure of its managing director and a refocusing on its Net search business late last month.